CUNY’s Independence Is Under Attack by Cuomo, City Council Members Say

Alarmed by what they said is Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s bid to politicize the City University of New York, a key bloc of New York City Council members pushed back against his assertions that the university’s administration has been financially irresponsible.

In a letter sent on Wednesday to CUNY’s chairman, William C. Thompson Jr., members of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus raised concerns about “wild rapid tirades of allegations and exaggerated charges” from the state and “a sustained attack on the independence and leadership of CUNY.”

In particular, the caucus co-chairmen, Councilmen Robert Cornegy Jr. of Brooklyn and fellow Democrat Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, cited a “strangely rushed, so-called interim report” issued last month by the state inspector general, Catherine Leahy Scott. After the report criticized CUNY’s financial and management practices as being “ripe for abuse,” Mr. Cuomo promised to appoint inspectors general for both CUNY and the State University of New York, and directed the CUNY board to review the findings and the university’s “entire senior management,” within 30 days.

With that deadline about a week away, the caucus, whose 22 members represent much of the City Council’s 51-person roster, asked that the CUNY board support the university’s “historic mission,” especially to educate “disadvantaged young people of color.”

In the coming weeks, two of CUNY’s most powerful officials — Frederick P. Schaffer, general counsel and senior vice chancellor for legal affairs, and Jay Hershenson, senior vice chancellor for university relations — are leaving the central office; Mr. Schaffer will retire and Mr. Hershenson will move to the Queens College campus.

They caucus also asked the university’s board of trustees to support James B. Milliken, the school’s embattled chancellor who was criticized in the inspector general’s report, and whose job security has been the subject of recent speculation amid a widening federal investigation at the City College of New York.

“If the board allows the governor to decapitate CUNY by forcing out the chancellor, you could do irreparable damage to the institution, and you could have trouble recruiting leadership in the future,” Mr. Torres said.

The gambit by the council members represents another development in a long-running feud over the future of CUNY, the largest public urban university in the country.

State officials contend that CUNY’s administrative costs are exorbitant, and last year Mr. Cuomo sought to shift more of the costs to the city from the state, which has paid the largest part of the CUNY’s costs since the city’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s. Now the governor has even more leverage, thanks to the City College spending scandal, which led President Lisa S. Coico to resign, and to a group of politically prominent trustees whom Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, recently appointed.

Mr. Thompson, a former city comptroller, who had not seen the letter, did not view the actions as a politicized attack. “If anything, the governor is demanding accountability and transparency,” he said.

“The board is going to work, along with the I.G. and Chancellor Milliken, to bring greater transparency and accountability to CUNY and take it to even greater heights of education excellence,” he said.

Alphonso David, Mr. Cuomo’s counsel, dismissed the letter, saying that no one had rebutted the findings, and that the ultimate goal should be to “address fraud and mismanagement.”

“Ultimately, what we have here is an I.G. report identifying significant problems with the university system that they acknowledge, and we should fix,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: CUNY’s Independence at Risk, Lawmakers Say. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe